And so it begins...
Cultural dominance till March
And so it begins...
Cultural dominance till March
write a letter.
You’re right, I didn’t play football. I played hockey from 6yo until 17. And baseball (we were state champs my jr and sr year). And soccer thru college.
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It’s always a citizen’s right to express her or his opinions by letter…even if the opinions are based on a misguided affection for an inferior sport enjoyed by Andy Capp and his friends.
Punks
to whom would I address said letter?
I vote with my $. I dont support the league, the bars that show it nonstop Thurs-Tues or the media, aka ESPN, that cover it at the expense of all other sport 24 7 365.
I nope out of most conversations around it, which is difficult this time of year especially with fantasy in play.
Go Dodgers
Sounds like you don’t know shit about sports other than football.
Read what I posted again. I said football is a great sport for large men with no aerobic endurance or hand-eye coordination. Didn’t say they weren’t strong or fast in short bursts, like sumo wrestlers or weight lifters.
The total action time (between snaps and whistles) in a football game is like 10 minutes. Less if you only play only one side of the line or special teams. So, like five minutes of total workload in a game? Typical play is what, 10seconds long with a 30 second recovery?
Action time for a typical front line hockey player is about one minute per shift, or six minutes per period - more if you are a defenseman, or on power play or penalty killing lines.
Action time in a 90min soccer match is about 60 min. And if you leave the field you’re out for the game.
No doubt football players have explosive strength and speed in 5-15 sec bursts. Just like sumo wrestlers or weight lifters. And, like sumo or weightlifting, most of them have no need for hand-eye or foot-eye coordination - on any given play, 90% of the players are out there to just knock another player off their feet.
Every hockey player needs puck handling skills. And the ability to skate. Every soccer player needs great foot-eye coordination, and goalkeepers need good hand-eye coordination as well.
And as far as comparison to cyclists, you’re right, they have no need for a massive upper body. OTOH, I’d like to see a football player push 300 watts for three hours, crash at 40 mph then get up and continue riding, because no substitutions.
yeah, no. footwork and reactionary movement is the foundation of the game at every single position. and the modern game is chiefly an exercise in throwing and catching the ball. sure, no need for the aerobic capacity of a cyclist or other endurance athlete, but not recognizing that football requires high level coordination at every position is asinine.
The downtime between plays is pretty laughable tho when compared to real futbol or its ancestor rugby. Compared to those guys, it’s hard to take football players getting gassed seriously
Yup. If the letter is worded strongly enough they will likely cancel football for the snowflakes.
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There’s so much ignorance here it’s tough to know where to start. https://inscyd.com/article/vo2max-ch...-gender-sport/
This isn’t the greatest source but it’s consistent with almost every vo2 max study I saw. Football players are literally better conditioned than track and field athletes.
Football players still have elite vo2 max values across the general population. What is your source for saying they have no aerobic endurance? Also, aerobic endurance is probably one of the most over rated metrics in sport. Speed makes athletes elite far more than the ability to go slow for long periods.
Literally every single player on a NFL team needs elite hand eye or hand foot coordination. Footwork is universally important at every position, especially the O-line. Hand eye coordination is obviously imperative for any skill player and I’d argue also for the offense and defensive line. They are constantly using their hands to get an advantage on the other.
I’d gamble that there are a number of NFL players who could train to do 300 watts on a bike for 3 hours. Mostly because they are bigger than cyclists and also elite athletes.
But did you seriously just argue that cyclists are tougher than NFL players? LOL. You might be the only person on the planet who thinks that. On the flip side of your ridiculous argument, no cyclist could play more than a couple plays in the NFL without getting unalived or sent to the hospital (punter and kicker not withstanding).
^^^Your chart doesn’t say what you think it does
Take a look - Focus on values for male athletes
Attachment 499271
What I’m seeing is that football players 20-36 years old have roughly the same VO2-max as runners that are 40-75 years old. According to this chart, jockeys have better aerobic conditioning than football players.
And don’t equate size with toughness. If a football player gets hurt, there are 10 people carrying him off the field to applause and a substitute brought in.
Bike racers have to keep going because if they stop they are out for the rest of the race, with no replacements.
One example that quickly comes to mind - Tyler Hamilton broke his clavicle in two places during stage two of the ‘03 Tour de France. He finished fourth 21 stages later.
As someone said ”you want to experience bike racing? Strip down to your underwear, get in the passenger seat of a car, have the driver go 40mph, then open the door and step out”.
Ok dude, you can be one of the only people in the world who think cyclists are tougher than football players. Multiple NFL players have played on broken legs. It’s common for nfl players to play with broken ribs etc. You’re touting a broken clavicle while riding a bike.
Your claim was that NFL players have no aerobic endurance. Are you saying a vo2 max of 60 constitutes no endurance? Do basketball players have no endurance?
Yea jockeys have good vo2 max, so do race car drivers and motocross riders. Both also benefit from generally being very small. Whereas NFL players are hurt by generally being very big. This is also why NBA players don’t have elite vo2 max compared to other sports.
Have you now backed off your claim that football players have no hand or foot eye coordination? Do you think cyclists have hand eye coordination? Have you ever tried to catch a football thrown at 50 mph while running at 20mph with a defender hanging on you?
If you think 5-10 minutes of total action time is light work and doesn’t require conditioning I want to see you do 30 10 second sprints with 30 seconds of rest in between.
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Have you backed off the claim that football players have better VO2 that track athletes?
Depends on the track and field athlete. Certainly not better than the track athletes running the 800 or longer.
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I’d wager a runner of any distance would have better aerobic fitness
Why? If you run the 100 or 200 you are training to be able to run that as fast as possible with long breaks in between. A DB is training to run a 40 yard sprint over and over and over again. Many elite receivers and defensive backs were elite sprinters in college and before. Listen to any one of them and they will tell you they had to change their training to have more endurance.
Would like to again point out that TBS equated the coordination of football players to that of sumo wrestlers and weightlifters.
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I’d also argue sumo wrestlers and Olympic weightlifters have really good coordination. I don’t know much about sumo but seems really similar to wrestling in many ways. Snatching 2x your bodyweight requires flawless coordination. Powerlifters not so much.
Elite athletes are elite. Anyone shitting on them should check themselves or show up with receipts.
This. I have a client that will occasionally give me sideline passes for Ute games. I am never not completely blown away by the athleticism up close. It is so above and beyond what normal humans can do that it baffles my mind. And 95% of these guys will never even sniff the NFL level. To say they have bad conditioning or no hand eye coordination is embarrassingly absurd. Hell, I'd say more than half of our population wouldn't survive a week of high school football practice.
Yep, even the lowest guy in the NBA will shut down any amateur and completely embarrass them
And yes, Sumos are amazingly agile. Seeing their moves up close is pretty amazing. Like any elite athlete
Wrestlers and boxers are in terrible shape. They are hardly moving and their matches are only 10-12 minutes long total!!!
Yeah, that's as ignorant of a take as the football no aerobic/coordination take. But, that's what you expect to get from a soccer player.
Sports that require max effort, every "play" are extremely aerobically taxing. For my money, high level tennis players are some of the most coordinated, best conditioned athletes out there.
Go Seagulls!!! Love my futbol mornings. Leaves time to do other stuff. Used to love Football, but the obsession with more more more, putting it on Monday then Thursday wore me down.
I played Free Safety and Corner in HS, so I am no stranger to the game. It just lost me with too much, and WAYYY too many commercials.
More pure action in a 14 minute Rugby 7's game than an entire NFL game. Proven fact. That is sad. That means that the games could be 30 minutes long. I can't get behind that kind of blatant bullshitism. Yet I still watch sometimes. Less and less each year though.
Superbowl Sunday was ALWAYS our favorite ski day of the year up at Mt Snow. The dearth of Starter jackets on Super Bowl Sunday was what made it worth the effort.
Bit of a different game, but when you are watching 7's, you are basically watching the best athletes Rugby has to offer. At least when it comes to fast breakaways and ball handling. Union is more of a sufferfest with drinking, lots of drinking. League is the bastard child of both. Watch League, but don't tell anyone about it.
Funny story. My dad played 8 years as a hooker. 4 at Holy Cross and 4 at UVM. He also got a chance to play at Twickenham, which left such a big impression on him and my mom that our first dog was named Twickers. He now coaches the women's team at my HS, and he refs college games. Anyway, he was down here visiting this spring and I had a Brighton game on. I was explaining to him why they are the best team, and will be the future champs (much better than Man U ever was- right Woodsy?).
We were watching a bit and he said, "You know- it seems like a cool game. I just don't understand the rules".
Now, no one understands the offsides rule. It changes every game and every ref. You are safe 1.5 lengths on one guy with one ref. Toenail past the line, you are out with another ref. VAR? Doesn't seem to matter.
So I say to him, " I've been watching Rugby for years. I still have no idea WTF the rules are. I have friends that have played for years. They say that in 10 years they might get it. But YOU can't understand the rules of Futbol?"
He agreed with me, but then said he still didn't understand it.
This should be expanded upon since the chart doesn't have units and most people don't know how VO2max is calculated.
VO2max is usually normalized to body mass. The numbers in that chart are mL/kg/min. A 250 lb football player with a VO2 of 60 mL/kg/min is insane. On an absolute basis that guy is processing 7 L/min while a middle distance guy with a VO2max of 80 mL/kg/min who weighs 130 is only pulling 4.8 L/min. 7 L/min is really, really high.
Pretty laughable to anyone who has actually played the game.
Seriously. There's plenty of legit criticisms of football, but the players not being good athletes isn't one of them. Imagine our Olympic dominace if football didn’t pull so much talent from other sports.
Road bike racers are tough as nails though.
Fixed it for you.
Agreed on tennis players. Fitness (sprint and endurance), agility and hand-eye coordination all necessary.
Let’s review hand-eye coordination requirements on a football team. How many positions require the player to throw or catch a pass?
- offensive backs, tight ends & wide receivers - that’s six
- defensive corners and safeties - 4
- linebackers? Meh - max number of interceptions in a season is nine - in 1952.
- special teams receivers
- kickers and punters and long snap centers also need good hand/foot-eye coordination.
So, a little more than half of those in offense/defense sets, and 80% of special teams, are just out there to knock somebody down. That takes short-burst fitness, hella strength and the ability to keep your feet when someone else wants the opposite. Hand-eye coordination? Notsomuch
How many hockey positions need to catch/pass/shoot pucks with a stick while skating at top speed? All but the goalies, who need to catch or trap 100mph shots.
Same with lacrosse.
How many soccer positions need to trap/dribble/shoot a moving ball while on a dead run? All but the goalies who need to catch/trap 70mph shots.
For that matter, every ultimate position requires catching and throwing a disk while on the run.
So American football is a great sport because of its inclusivity. There’s a place for everyone (over 200lbs) regardless of hand/foot-eye coordination, agility or aerobic endurance.
It could not be more clear that you have never played football, nor have you ever played any sport at a high level. It's kind of funny, the further you go, the more appreciative you become of the abilities of other elite athletes from other sports.... Because you start to understand what it takes to be elite, at anything.
You are looking at these sports from a lower level perspective, and sure, you aren't wrong that high school football players don't need to be impressively fit or coordinated. But, neither do any high school athletes... It's youth sports.
You compare ultimate frisbee players to NFL players. Fuck me. You probably think Phish is the greatest band ever too.
Give the top nfl guys a month of playing lacrosse and they’d be dominant. But probably wouldn’t fit the preppy east coast elite school vibe.
If there was no football, the USA would totally dominate in rugby.
In the Stanley cup finals, how many games finished with a team not even having 20 shots on goal. Used to love hockey but it’s boring as hell now with zone defenses blocking all shooting able angles.
And if there’s one sport for fat fucks it’s baseball. Most famous player ever was a complete dough boy.
Elite tennis players are insane.
You don’t need to like football. But anyone questioning the athleticism of NFL players is clearly insane.
Every single person on the planet is more athletic than I am. I still hate football.
Shit man, tryout as a NFL walk on. From what I learned here you’ll fit right in. Maybe hit the Bowflex first but you got this!
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Played the game. Started coaching HS when in college for a very competitive work 7days a week, nearly year around, program. Had fun winning. Got burnt out after 4 years and didn’t even watch a game of any kind for a long while.
There is plenty of shit, especially in D1 and NFL that drive me crazy and the media infatuation doesn’t help.
My boy’s team needed a coach, so I stepped in. This sport is like a drug, and I am fully back to addicted.
With the level of complexity in athletic and mental requirements there is just nothing like it. In no other sport do so many different roles have a complete ability to win or lose the game. From the kicker, to the coaches, to even the ball boy/girl everyone has to be clicking to be successful. The specialization of the players is absurd. The variety of body types to compete is absurd. What other team sport has players as little as 150lb and as much as 300lb all playing on the field at the same time?
Four radically different ways for the offense to advance the ball. An absurd number of ways for the defense to defend the goal line. Take every playbook ever written and combine them all and there are more X/Os than every other team sport combined. I have watched a lot of basketball and hockey, I can see the playbooks unfolding, I haven’t for soccer, but I know there are plenty of set pieces and defensive and offensive plays and it isn’t just chaos.
I am saddened to see players injured and die playing a game they love. It sucks and it is tragic for their families.
I am rambling. I will shut up.
The 300 lb guys are pretty fucking fast, especially on defensive side. Average 40 times at the combine are about 4.5 for WRs, RBs and DBs, and DEs are 4.8. A 300+ lb DE running at 4.8 pace is terrifying.
Sure. All the truly fast big guys are passing up NFL salaries to play rugby.
My buddy in high school was an all American OL (6’5”, about 290 in high school, possibly conservatively) Went on to captain his D-I team and spent a few seasons in the pros. I assume not sub5.0, but still scary fast for that much mass.
We’d be hanging around during free periods or after school - at one point he started chasing me over something and it honestly triggered some weird primal level fear. Like “that’s the alpha predator, you will die, your best bet is to not be seen by it”